The vacuum tube market has gone into a tailspin with Russia's attack on, and invasion of, Ukraine, and the subsequent world response holding Russia in contempt for doing so.
Mike Matthews, owner of ElectroHarmonix and reseller of Russian tubes has indicated that, yes, with the attack on Ukraine, and world sanctions against Russia, that for the foreseeable future, Russian tubes are no more.
Sometimes it's really only possible to recognize an earlier victory that you've captured only after you've put a whole lot more hard work in. Going through this slog was pretty tough. And it was only after starting to go through it that I'd realized the possible mess I'd gotten myself into.
Here's a view of the carnage after the fact (what we'd won)...
It was an auction site that was new to us, and a slightly new way of bidding, so there was some discomfort, naturally. But the site and the auctioneer also made available something I'd never been able to do before on eBay: Actually go look at the real, physical items I would be bidding on!
We've been meaning to post something about our encounter with Lace Pickups a couple of weeks ago, but just saw this from Brian Wampler's YouTube channel. It just was posted today on YouTube:
Fans of old Orange and Matamp amplifiers rejoice!
Planet of the Amps has lots of old amps for you to drool over. Planet of the Amps was put up by Joel Wheeler, who owns Electric Amp Company, USA.
It just so happens that a lot of downtuned Fuzz/Doom bands (starting most famously, with Sleep and their crusade to get as many old Oranges as they could to revive them...) LOVE the sound of the amps that Planet of the Amps features.
I usually try to avoid more than one post a day, but because we think this needs to get out sooner rather than later:
From Bruce Egnater's Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/bruce.egnater/posts/10203655157839044?pnref=story
For a few years now, I've been scouring the Internet, looking for snippets, and bits and pieces of information - and putting them together in order to try and build a reasonable educational curriculum on how to master the building of, and the repair of, tube amplifiers. I've wanted to do it whether the amps built are for Guitar, Bass, Vocals, or public address (PA). I've bought Merlin Blencowe's books on building tube amps. I even have his out-of-print "Designing Power Supplies for Tube Amplifiers".
